'Severity,' said Dr. Johnson, 'may be the way to govern men, but it is not the way to mend them,'—a sentiment which the wife of Stauncy mentally endorsed, as she listened to her husband's hectoring; and when he had closed the door on the 'prentice, she said, 'That was not like you, James. I never saw you act so unkindly before, nor so unwisely; for people are very much as they are treated. To disregard the finer feelings is to weaken them, and to be unjustly severe is to create an itching for that course which deserves it. You have smitten on the head some feeling that might have contributed to right character, and helped to make the boy reckless as well as hostile. Did you really promise him a guinea, James? Why, think, then, how he has been nursing the idea; what a hold it must have got on him; how he has been revelling in the prospect; and, all at once, you not only extinguish hope, and injure his feelings deeply, but you falsify your word, and make yourself unworthy of his confidence.'
'I would I were as wise as you, Mary,' replied Stauncy who had acted unnaturally, and whose conscience upbraided him; 'I should keep free from trouble; but I thought it best to act as I did.'
'Unkindness can never be best, James; wrong can never be right. You must think better of it and do the boy justice.' But the captain was unwilling to retrace his steps, for reasons of which his sensible and prudent wife knew nothing. So he left the matter where it was, saying to himself, 'What must be, must.'
The darkening shadows had fallen for hours that night, when a party more numerous than usual took possession of the taproom of the Jolly Tar, in one of the narrow streets of Appledore. The ruddy glow of the log fire on the hearth was warmly reflected on the faces of the motley group as they sat around the settle, and gave to their features a bloated appearance, which too well read out the sottish habits of most of them. Night after night they congregated in that beery repository of gossip and scandal, of drunkenness and brawling; and many were the hapless wives and children who paid in hunger, nakedness, tears, and crime, for their bacchanalian selfishness and revelry. The company was varied occasionally by casual visitors, who were constrained to 'stand a treat,' and tempted to aspire after that maudlin condition denominated 'three sheets in the wind.' Such a visitor on the evening in question was Sam Pickard, who became the hero of the night, and escaped the ordinary requirement of 'glasses round,' from the sympathy awakened by his escape from a watery grave. Jim Ortop's father a wild, cadaverous-looking shoemaker, and a noted tippler, appeared to be the leading spirit; and from the twinkling of his eyes, and the rapidity with which he swallowed his potations, it was evident that he was unusually excited.
By general request, Sam Pickard proceeded to give them the history of the loss of the Sarah Ann, which he did with much feeling, and amidst a silence which was only broken occasionally by unsympathetic grumblings from the restless, angry-looking shoemaker.
'What's become of the six poor fellows who drifted away in the jolly-boat?' asked a grim-looking blacksmith.
'Who knows?' said Pickard; 'I heard this afternoon that part of a boat had been picked up over to Braunton, and that'—
'Just before I came here,' broke in one of the party, 'Bill Berry to............